In the last 3 parts of the Exchange 2016 Loadbalancing articles I have already tested F5 and Kemp. Both solutions work great. In the fourth and final part, I would like to briefly introduce a free load balancer. Zen Loadbalancer Community Edition.
First of all: In my opinion, Zen Loadbalancer is at best suitable for demo or test environments, although I would also prefer F5 or Kemp in these environments.
Zen Loadbalancer can be downloaded here:
The test environment is still the same as with F5 and Kemp. The corresponding articles can be found here:
- Exchange 2016: Load balancing with F5 BigIP LTM 11.6 (iApp) Part 1
- Exchange 2016: Load balancing with F5 BigIP LTM 11.6 (iApp) Part 2
- Exchange 2016: Load balancing with Kemp Loadmaster 7.1 Part 3
Once Zen Loadbalancer has been deployed and integrated into the network, the configuration can begin. The configuration is fairly simple, but there is very little that can be set, so in my opinion Zen Loadbalancer cannot be used productively.
The first step is to create a farm:
Only one name needs to be assigned here:
Nachdem aus „Save & continue“ geklickt wurde, kann das entsprechende Interface und der Port für den Virtual Service angegeben werden:
Nach einem Klick auf „Save“ ist die Farm gespeichert und es sollte wie folgt aussehen:
Auf dem Button „Edit Farm Settings“ (siehe Screenshot oben) lassen sich jetzt ein paar Einstellungen festlegen und die Exchange Server hinzufügen:
The IPs of the Exchange servers are entered under Real Servers and 443 as the port:
That's all there is to it. It works too:
But.... This is a toy... I'm a bit disappointed, I thought the project might have developed a bit further, but that's not the case. There are neither monitors that check the status of the real servers (at least not built-in), nor any kind of overview that shows the status of the servers. Well, I have only configured layer 4 load balancing here, but my motivation was no longer sufficient for layer 7 with SSL offloading.
Conclusion: F5 LTM is my clear favorite, of course very few people will run an LTM cluster just for Exchange. Daniel expresses this in the Comments ganz richtig aus: „Eine F5 nur für Exchange hinzustellen ist aber in den allermeisten Fällen mit Kanonen auf Spatzen geschossen, da hat die ja gar nichts zu tun.“ Recht hat er :-)
Can it be a little smaller? Kemp does a good job, quickly configured, everything works. The Loadmaster has nothing to hide.